I would like an orbit option that has the position of the mouse as its center. So you could place the mouse in a viewport (I guess it could only be in the Perspective viewport) and orbit around that point.
When you select an object and use ZoomSelect, Rhino zooms in on that object. After zooming out again the object remains the orbit center.
Max.
Thank you so much. I never would have thought a zoom would affect an orbit. But now I know. I had to play around with it a bit to see what it actually does and, luckily you can unselect the object and it’ll orbit it for a while. That’s what i wanted: an unselected orbit around an object.
I could be wrong about this (since I am too lazy to actually test the theory) but isn’t the orbit pivot just the camera target as set in the viewport settings?
I imagine zooming in on to an object is simple setting that object to the target (hence changing the orbit point) and then moving the camera to somewhere suitable?
You are wrong about that. The zoom target is where you point your cursor at, the orbit pivot is somewhere else. Create a bunch of objects, and Zoom Extent. Your orbit pivot will now be somewhere in the middle. Point your cursor to a perimeter object and zoom in. When you now try to orbit your camera, the object will disappear quickly from your view, since the pivot point is clearly not the target point of your zooming action.
Max.
No, he’s not, actually. The camera does indeed orbit around the target point. It’s easy to prove.
In a 4 view setup, with some geometry visible in the active Perspective viewport, type Camera and set it to Show. You will see the camera in the other 3 views. Now, with the Viewport section visible in the right sidebar, scroll down to Target, click the gearwheel and choose “PlaceTarget”. Snap to some point on some object. You will see the camera update in the other three viewports. Now when you orbit the Perspective viewport, you will see the camera pivot around the target point.
–Mitch
heh, i think there’s some terminology confusion going on… max is saying ‘zoom target’ in the sense of ‘zooming to cursor’… which is confusing since ‘zoom target’ means something different in rhino such as how mitch (and i, and others) would interpret it.
so max, do what mitch is describing and you’ll see Zoom Target does actually change the point in which the camera will orbit around… doing Zoom Extents will center the target within the selected geometry… doing Zoom Target will allow you to precisely place the point in which you’ll orbit around.
i think on windows there’s an option to make the target change automatically depending on what’s visible in the viewport.
I stand corrected. As Jeff is saying, I confused zooming to cursor with zoom to target. I followed Mitch’s instructions so now I know better. But I can’t help feeling I am closing in on a “target” when I place my cursor somewhere in the viewport and zoom in.
Max.
In fact, Max, you have highlighted my ambiguities. I should have specified that zooming to a selected object sets that selection as the orbit pivot. I agree with you that you can zoom on the location of the cursor without it changing…
Actually, now I have just confused myself. I shall wander off now. 
You are in fact.
The normal Zoom function takes the cursor into account, it assumes that the user has the cursor at the area of interest and wants to zoom in on that. So, in that case, when zooming, Rhino not only moves the camera point, it moves the target point as well (towards the cursor position). Again, with the setup I described before, try mousewheel zooming while the cursor is over different areas in the Perspective viewport and see what happens to the target point in say, Top view.
–Mitch
Now I am really confused. In the picture, I zoomed in on the two bright yellow parts that I would consider to be the “target”, in Perspective View (right). In the Top View you can see the camera setting (left).
But my “target” is clearly not the orbiting center, so it seems that I have a wrong understanding of what the target point is.
Max.
Hey Max,
Here is a quick video of what I see - it’s Windows, but I think Mac should be pretty much identical.
–Mitch
Thanks for the video Mitch. I played with the camera visualization a bit more, and I think I understand it better now. The error I was making is that, when you said the Target is where you place the cursor, I assumed that the object I pointed at would become the target, in fact it is somewhere on that line of sight but not necessarily on the object itself. So when I orbit around the target the objects disappear from sight. It makes sense, there is no way that Rhino “knows” what on the sightline I want to target, unless I select the object and use ZoomSelected.
After all that, I believe my original answer to Ray was correct, the target, and hence the orbiting point, is not automatically set to the object you zoom in to.
Correct. To define a specific target point, you need to use Zoom Target. To define a “general” target such as an object to orbit around, select the object and use Zoom Selected.
–Mitch